The House DOGE subcommittee held Wednesday hearing on NPR and PBS, both of which Trump would like to dismantle. Trump said on Tuesday he'd "love" to shut them down. The heads of both networks testified for their usefulness against a GOP that pointed out the massive budget deficit as well as the well-documented biased programming exhibited on both state-funded networks. Conditions must be placed on the networks, but if they can be remade, both NPR and PBS serve a useful purpose that the marketplace has abandoned: local news, cultural and educational content.

"I would love to do that," Trump said when asked about the networks. "I think it's very unfair. It's been very biased. The whole group, I mean, a whole group of them and frankly, there's plenty of — look at all the media you have right now. There's plenty of coverage."

"It was from a different age," he went on, "and they spent more money than any other network of its type ever conceived, so the kind of money being wasted is a very biased view. You know that better than anybody and I'd be honored to see it end. We're well covered. Look at all the people that we have here today. We're well covered and don't need it and it's a waste of money. I don't even know what DOGE's recommendation is. I assume their recommendation is to close them up."

Trump is right: PBS and NPR are from a different age. Back when there were only three networks, each for profit, each obsessed with ratings for news shows and entertainment, PBS offered a respite. Educational shows for children, documentaries, news broadcasts that were able to go more in-depth without worrying about commercial breaks, the airing of less popular shows (like Dr. Who), cultural offerings, and local content were what populated the PBS affiliates. NPR affiliates, too, offered local content, in-depth interviews, and music that wasn't available on top 40 stations.

Both networks were trusted by the public, and both networks have given up that trust in favor of partisan marksmanship in which they espouse a far-left set of views and beliefs. As GOP House members questioned the two CEOs on Wednesday, that bias was on full display. Two Reps from Texas, Brandon Gill and Pat Fallon, laid bare some of the more egregious examples of leadership and editorial practice.

Fallon pointed out that in 2023, "PBS had a program, Washington Week with The Atlantic, and when President Biden's mental acuity was questioned, one of the reporters claimed the GOP was lying, another reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg... described Biden as 'mentally acute.'" There were no alternative opinions presented. In 2023, when it became apparent that Biden was not mentally acute, many stated the obvious: that the media—including PBS—had been entirely complicit in that cover-up.